Onion
by S.Zix
Summary: Nearly alone in Mideel, Tifa's frustration with Cloud's identity crisis and vegetative leads her to the onion patch and down the rabbit hole to an inverted world where her only guide is not only dead, but missing a few, ahem, layers.
1. Part OverCrowded

**Onion: Part Over-Crowded (1/3)**

On her third day in Mideel, Tifa awoke in a wooden rocker to the left of Cloud's wheelchair. His moans scratched her ears like ticks. When she opened her eyes, plates of brown—almost black—hair striped her vision; she looked at Cloud, and it seemed to her that strips of flesh had gone missing from his face.

With a groan, she told him good morning and gave him a reassuring—at least, that was the intent—squeeze on the shoulder, to which he replied "Ugh."

Tifa Lockhart told herself that this was merely a reflection on his almost-alive-dead state of mind rather than her close proximity and personal hygiene. She rejected the urge to leap into his lap and bang her fists against his ribcage. The hospital staff had already had to forcibly remove her once.

She ran her fingers over the grooves of the chair and decided that her resolution to sit beside Cloud while she slept had been a stupid one. Despite this, however, Tifa realized that she would probably get the same stupid idea this evening.

Because she was stupid.

Tifa hoisted herself free of the seat. Her pores had dirt shoved inside them, and her skin bore pink ribbon scrapes as a result of the itch, but she hated the showers and the waiting for patients and the infernal lack of water pressure that soaked up at least an hour of her time. Squeezing Cloud's shoulder again as she left the room, Tifa opted to skip the shower and head for the half-bath facility.

Everything in the whole hospital seemed to be made of wood or fabricated plastic wood grain except for the plumbing, the sinks, the toilets, and Cloud's wheel chair. As Tifa's borrowed wood grain toothbrush jutted from the lower right corner of her mouth, she fussed with the hair drizzling over her forehead. Some days, it refused to lie flat.

Frustrated, she ripped the toothbrush from her mouth and threw it into the upside down hip curve of the sink. The foam from the toothpaste followed. Everything ended up stained and wet with traces of brown—almost black—hairs dredged throughout.

Lockhart grabbed the brush—wood grain—and started tearing through her hair and fussing with the mess in the sink, cleaning toothpaste with one sticky hand and brushing-fiddling with her hair with the other. The sticky hand crawled up her scalp like a spider, and before Tifa realized what she was doing, she saw long hair split into three brown—almost black—ropes, slithering around each other into a sleek braid.

As if she had always braided her hair.

Pushing away the thought that "identity crisis" might be contagious, Tifa used her dry hand to pull out the braid and tossed the hairbrush into the sink with the toothpaste.

Before Tifa turned on the water to wash the whole potential drain-clog mess down the not-wood plumbing, she took a quick look at the brown—almost _blond_—hairs wriggling in toothpaste and water. The water came on with a swish, and the refuse hiccuped down the drain.

Tifa trundled out around the building into the dull green of mossy forest instead of heading back down the wooden hallway to Cloud's wheelchair. The grass-covered path led her directly under the backyard windmill and into the vegetable garden rimmed by the trees and domed by the sunlight. It reminded her of the forests of Gongaga, the way all trees did anymore, and the paprika dawn before _and_ after everything turned to shit. If she squinted, she could still see the pastel dress weaving around the wire bark, but the word "stop" still struggled in her throat.

Even so, Tifa preferred the haunting to the haunted inside the hospital.

_Certain_ vegetables had less of a tendency to make "incomprehensible" moans that came out 'oor' and preceded a hiss. And _certain_ vegetables were cold and secretive. They hid under blankets of earth instead of masquerading as a collection of brightly colored eyelashes.

The hospital preferred to grow said vegetables, operating under the rather endearing assumption that vegetables grown below ground and close to the Life Stream have spiritual properties. In reality, they just depleted the nutrients in the soil faster.

Lockhart knelt beside a square onion field and let the sunlight shrivel some of the dirt in her pores. Fingers reached under a mound of soil, digging deep for a green morsel. Infant onions—and onions in general—had no layers in the metaphorical sense. One could call them layered, but such things imply sections with differentiation.

She reached something slimy and round—squashed materia in the Planet's orifice—and tugged. Her limbs ground in her joints when the onion refused to budge. Tifa had stolen young onions from the hospital garden with a single tug before; this experience was entirely new. Perplexed, she wrinkled her forehead—just a touch—and _yanked_.

Nothing. Tifa threw handfuls of hair over her shoulders and thrust her bare knees into the dirt. She gave a violent haul.

This time the onion loosened. A little. She could see the less appealing blossom top cresting the lips of the Planet's birth canal. Thinking that this gain marked victory, Tifa gave another pull.

_What gives_? Tifa dug her hands further below the onion to finger the fuzzy roots. Strange, she thought, nothing about them seemed titanium.

Not willing to lose to an onion after all her years of training, the martial artist crawled onto her haunches to use her legs as leverage. Nearly crushing the tiny onion ball with her fists, Lockhart gripped harder before digging in her heels and shoving her body into a near-standing position with her knees.

The pull brought forth the rest of the onion, its roots—fingers, hands clutching at the roots, long white arms, brown—almost blond—hair, round face with brittle dark eyelashes and thin lips, shoulders, breasts—

Everything—something (a corpse) or someone—came up so swiftly through the wrenching dirt that Tifa Lockhart unbalanced. Her body fell backward, her back flattening the rest of the onion patch, and the results of her labors fell on top of her, face up. Narrow shoulders pressed into her stomach. A lank back molded around her knees. Dirt clutched at hips just below a navel and soft stomach.

The collection of body parts looked to Tifa just like Aeris Gainsborough: flower girl and martyr extraordinaire. Even _worse_, she was warm and decidedly not dead. Orange-pink color moved under the skin film of the should-be corpse in firework forays.

Tifa did not feel shocked. She remained in a vague phase of 'of course there's a body on the other end of this onion, and who else would it be but Aeris?' She became aware of the dirt clinging to skin, dropping from Aeris' shoulders to her stomach, from Aeris' back to her knees.

Birds sang on Mideel morning. Moss trees and grey sky crept into Tifa's consciousness. And Aeris was naked. In her lap.

Then Aeris' eyelids split. The world caught on green fire.

"Let go! Let go!" Aeris wriggled on top of Tifa's legs.

Tifa had forgotten about the onion clutched in her fingers. Without a breath, she dropped it and scrambled out from under the naked flower girl. Bare knees scraped Aeris' naked back.

"Not you!" Aeris moaned, her lips twitching in frustration. "I was talking to _them_."

Lockhart blinked and looked to the opening in the Planet's surface that hugged Aeris' waist. Aeris' navel vanished. The ground swallowed her hips. Something below the surface pulled her down, tearing her back along the rocks and the soil of the onion patch. The dirt rolled like waves on the shore of Costa del Sol and ate Aeris' stomach with invisible teeth.

"Help me!" Aeris pleaded, clinging to the upset ground with one naked arm and waving the onion's green plumes in Tifa's direction with the other.

Still not thinking or breathing, Tifa leapt after the onion. She snatched the bulb just as Aeris lost the length of her abdomen to the planet.

Aeris' eyes shuttered to the dirt. "This is my onion!" she told the Planet. "Get your own."

Tifa pulled at the onion even harder than before. She started thinking again: thinking that Cloud needed Aeris because _she_ knew him _no matter what_, and _damnit_, Tifa _would not lose to an onion_! _Tifa would not watch her disappear again_. Only this time, the dirt did not just refuse to give; the Planet pulled back.

Lockhart laid her body flat on the surface of the onion patch. Stocks brushed against her stomach as the ground pulled Aeris' shoulders under. Tifa held onto the onion tightly, crushing the fragile new bulb, but kept sliding closer and closer to the opening. Even when she could see nothing but Aeris' disheveled braid—still oddly intact, despite Gainsborough's general nudity and filth—Tifa's grip did not relent. The dirt had claimed the onion too—and her hands, her arms. Tifa did not realize that she had started crying until she tasted salt in the dirt.

One final tug and pull back sent Tifa shooting through the tunnel in the ground after Aeris. Dirt filled her mouth, her ears, her nose. She would take an hour-long shower then, no matter how much she had to wait. Rocks flattened her stomach as her body slithered over bumps and gravel. Eyelashes latched together to keep the filth out.

Deep, deep without breath. Dirt scratched and snared, but Tifa had forgotten how to let go. She just crushed the onion in her hands until juice dribbled in with the dirt and stung her scrapes and cuts. Fragments splintered in her palms until she would swear that she held _nothing_, but she could feel Aeris Gainsborough pulling her down further anyway. Her lungs heaved in her chest cavity until she needed to take a breath—

As soon as Tifa tried to breathe, she could. The movement stopped. The ache of dirt, scratches, and cuts vanished. Lockhart opened her eyes.

Tifa thought about screaming, but decided that it would probably do her no good. After all, this could not possibly be reality. Screaming only worked in reality—and then, not very often. As soon as she thought about it, however, her ears seemed to clear, and she could hear better than she ever had.

It did not help.

She could feel.

Even worse.

Yowling bodies mingled around her, tearing at her limbs and her clothes. She could see no faces: just rough fabric. Long robes covered the bodies, and veils covered the faces. The robes reminded Tifa of the ones worn by Sephiroth clones, only none of them were black. The "clones" came at her decked in bright colors.

Red gloves poked at her bare shoulders. Yellow arms brushed Tifa's face. Blue boots kicked Tifa's stomach. Color swarmed like mist—only rough, solid—from all sides, above, and below. Moans and breathing cluttered her ears, but she could distinguish no words.

A clear scream cut through as an orange figure tore out a clutch of Tifa's brown—almost black—hair. Tifa recognized the tone of the voice well, and the words hit her like solid objects against the gut.

"Let go!" Aeris repeated, only this time she referred to Tifa's body instead of her own.

The orange figure flew away from Tifa's face. The sea of color began to drain and pool feet away from her. Aeris Gainsborough charged through an opening—still completely naked, showing off the full splendor of her legs as well as her torso—brandishing a glass object that looked remarkably like a colorless rendition of Cloud's buster sword.

Glass deflected light and bolted in every direction. A white beam caught the head of a figure in violet. The figure's robe split and fell away from him, revealing a man with a blue cap and Shinra grunt uniform. Exposed, he immediately dropped through the floor.

The rest of the colorful clones expanded wider than Don Corneo and burst, sending sparks through the air.

Tifa stared at Aeris then. Thin lips split Gainsborough's face into an obscene grin. Her braid wrapped around her neck like a collar. She said absolutely nothing—just continued to brandish her ridiculous buster sword replica. Tifa had many questions she wished that Aeris would answer, but she figured that they were fairly obvious ones that she should not have to voice.

"They shouldn't do that." Aeris frowned, letting her lower lip jut out. "If they'd just be patient, everyone could get an onion."

"Aeris?" Tifa found her voice somewhere between the shaky knees that refused to stand and the drying liquid sweat-tears-saliva flaking off her lips.

"Who else would it be?" Aeris' braid dipped low and fell over her shoulders.

Tifa looked away after the frayed mess coiled around Aeris' breasts. Often, Tifa had imagined what Aeris might look like under pink collars and pleats. Was she prettier than Tifa? What would Cloud see? Did he imagine Aeris at the same time Tifa did? At the moment she would not deign to peek.

"I don't know," came Lockhart's nervous reply. Her attention had shifted to her feet, which she hoped would provide a distraction as captivating as an Aeris alive, naked, and brandishing a glass sword.

Tifa appeared to have misplaced a shoe—perhaps one of the rainbow clones had snatched it before Aeris scared them away—but that did not alarm her nearly as much as the surface below her mismatched footwear.

Hundreds of blue bouis Shinra grunt caps bobbed below Tifa's boot. Grunts clad in blue uniforms—as the disrobed clone had been—marched underneath a glass ceiling. She could see no space between each body not occupied by a blue cap or vest, and so she concluded that, perhaps, the men below her marched upon a similar ceiling-floor comprised of a similar group of Shinra grunts: layers of living tiling.

Tifa let her eyes drift upward, but they only met a mirror. Tifa Lockhart stared down at Tifa Lockhart, looking exactly as Tifa Lockhart expected Tifa Lockhart would—save for one alarming detail. Ceiling Lockhart strangled a long, glass Masamune in her right hand—dyed rouge and dripping red lily petals. As Tifa stared, she noticed the curved back of a reflection of Aeris Gainsborough inching toward reflection Tifa on her hands and knees.

Red eyes jerked down from the mirror. Tifa flexed her right hand and stared toward Aeris' back. Only, unlike in the mirror, Aeris skipped away from Tifa, dragging an arm, attached to a clear Buster Sword that scraped over SOLDIER heads. Despite the colors of the floor and ceiling, all space between was white and empty. If Tifa lost Aeris, she wouldn't be able to find her again.

"Aeris," Tifa called. She did not want to lose her only link to 'reality': the only thing she recognized in this construct—of _what_?—world.

Aeris did not slow down. Tifa had no choice but to start running after her. Tifa hoped that the Shinra forces below could not feel the weight of her boot on their stepping stone heads. It made her think of Cloud and how she had stepped on his head by denying him the truth.

When Tifa waded close enough, Aeris curled her neck to look at her.

"This isn't The Lifestream." Aeris answered Tifa's question without her having to voice it. The corners of her lips stretched toward the mirror. "I don't know where it is."

"Is it the Promised Land?" Tifa half-suggested.

Aeris shook her head as she skipped. "The Promised Land isn't below ground—or above, for that matter."

"But you're dead?" Tifa decided to at least inspect Aeris' body for rot. While some of the skin on her thighs hung loose, with pores the size of rock salt chunks, her body still possessed the same orange-pink warmth that her face and arms had while she lived.

The naked woman halted, spun on her heel, and forced her face into Tifa's. "Are you?" Aeris asked, suspicious.

As Tifa stepped backwards, Aeris tilted forward, bringing the smell of dirt, onion, and Gongaga with her—still foisted under her fingernails and in her hair. Tifa could not come up with an answer.

"I don't know what it means," Aeris confessed, pulling away. Tifa fought with the sudden impulse to leap after her and drag her back by the shoulders. "Being dead is just like being alive. You would think it would change, but I keep doing exactly what I did before. Didn't you notice?"

Apparently not.

Aeris turned her ass to Tifa and continued skipping forward as Tifa tried to look away. "We're going to find you an onion," Aeris called over her shoulder, not bothering to slow down, even with the jerk of her legs sending hollow bumps through her voice, "but I want to show you something first."

"I'm not going to follow you all over Hades' Underworld," Tifa snapped back.

The flower girl hummed as she skipped, apparently unconcerned. Tifa thought about staying put out of defiance, but she would eventually have to face the fact that she would get nowhere—where was she even going?—unless she followed Aeris. She also realized that, wherever she was, she knew Aeris, knew her like she knew herself, and even though Aeris should not have been standing before her, alive and naked, Tifa cloud not help trusting her.

As Tifa walked, the realization that Animated Aeris _existed _and paraded in front of her began to sink in. Tifa wanted to touch her, shake her, run her hands through her immaculate braid, and sob childishly into her shoulder—after all, Cloud wouldn't let her cry against him. She had tried it the first day, frustrated to see him in his vegetative state, but it had come to nothing, and she had only felt worse afterward. For the first time, Tifa thanked Shiva that Aeris was naked. It might have been the only thing restraining her.

Bad enough, but Tifa had nowhere to look but at Aeris' bare backside. She did not like that she stepped on SOLDIER skulls, and she feared the mirror with all of its mortifications above her head. "At least tell me about the onions," Tifa demanded, no longer able to contain her questions.

Aeris said nothing, but came to a stop. Tifa had to rely on her quick reflexes to avoid colliding with Aeris' skin. Strange, since she could have sworn the flower girl had skipped feet ahead of her. Aeris stretched her hand out, as if grasping a doorknob, and turned her wrist. Though Tifa saw nothing in her cupped palm, a rectangle of air pushed inward.

Gripping Tifa's shoulder, Aeris darted through the opening. Tifa jerked after her, head lolling on her neck. For a split second, she vanished completely.


	2. Part Inversion

**Onion: Part Inversion (2/3)**

_Beta for Part 1, __**Clan Dragoodle**__. I am too lazy to reupload it. How the lazy have fallen lower. Don't blame her for this section; she only gave me the idea to use Corneo's Mansion, which hardly explains the rest._

She—and Aeris—reappeared, of course. The rectangle—door?—did not return, however, nor did the corridor, and Tifa surveyed her new surroundings, wresting her shirt from Aeris' grip. The room was made of gold, with red Zoloms coiling around one another and etched into the walls, hoods puffed wide. There were three doors, each emblazoned with sketches of flowers that bloomed away from Tifa.

Urns full of blue, viscous liquid and silver wracks boasting hangars full of short, colorful dresses ringed the room. Tifa imagined a marching entourage of Sephiroth clones in robes and prostitutes in matching gowns. She had not realized that she had reached for one of the racks until she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"You won't be needing that," Aeris whispered, so close to Tifa's ear that she imagined she could smell Phoenix Down on her breath. She shivered. "Why put an extra layer on what he really wants?"

Tifa's own vulnerability alarmed her—especially fully clothed next to a naked Aeris. She stole her fingers back from the sapphire satin and let Aeris lead her, laughing at Tifa's alarm, to the first door.

"Tulips!" Aeris waved her arm against the gold of the room. There was a paper staircase behind the door that led several yards down; it did not look very sturdy. At its foot, Aeris, still naked, knelt on the floor with her hands pressed in prayer, or Planet speech, between her breasts.

Despite her hesitation, Tifa tipped a boot on the staircase. It did not seem to give, though the paper crinkled under her step. She put her full weight on it and walked down the stairs, listening to the "crunch-crunch-crunch" of crisp paper under her feet. When she stepped off the bottom stair, she looked around. It was a dungeon—typical-looking, for once, in all but the bright blue lighting and the methods of torture strewn across the walls—

Giant mirrors. When she looked into them, Aeris Gainsborough stared back.

Tifa snapped her eyes shut, but immediately reopened them when she felt someone tugging at her boot.

Tifa saw Naked Aeris on the floor, cross-legged and expectant. Sighing, Tifa sat down next to her. She then followed Naked Aeris' gaze across the room and saw her and a fully clothed Aeris talking through one of the mirrors. It was the day they met, in the basement of Don Corneo's Mansion, and Tifa wore a blue dress, while Aeris wore red. Though there was no Cloud—dolled up or otherwise—to be seen.

She remembered then, what had happened after Aeris entered the room.

"Poor Cloud," Aeris in red said, "having to stand here and listen to both of us call him nothing."

She had not noticed Cloud, girl or otherwise, before Aeris had said something, Tifa remembered. Sure enough, Tifa in blue looked around her and found nothing in the dungeon—because, unlike in Tifa's memory, there was not anyone there but Aeris. The thought seemed horrifying for the observing Tifa. She tried to picture her own memory clearly: Cloud in the purple dress with the yellow pigtails, the scent of perfume plating his neck. The memory dribbled away, and Tifa made fists as if to grasp after it. Yet the clarity of the image in the mirrors over-powered Tifa, and she was forced to wonder if Cloud had actually been there…

"Cloud?"

The scene in the mirrors flickered, as if playing from a torn reel of film. When it righted itself, the formally dressed Tifa and Aeris stood in opposite corners of the dungeon with faces toward the dusty floor and blue light branding the backs of their necks.

"If you know the three girls, there's no problem, right?" Aeris in red asked.

Tifa recognized this scene too. It was the moment Cloud had disappeared again, she remembered, but if he hadn't been there in the first place...

"Is it all right?" said Tifa in blue, turning around.

"I grew up in the slums. I'm used to danger. Do you trust me?" Aeris in red turned as well.

Their eyes met in the center, they both raised their fists, holding smashed yellow tulips.

"Yes," Tifa in blue said. "Thanks, Ms. Tifa."

Sitting Tifa blinked. Great, she was calling Aeris by her own name now. Naked Aeris, craned her body around in front of her. She glared at the Tifa beside her.

"There was no need to ask," Tifa heard Aeris in red say through the mirror.

Then Tifa glared back at Aeris. The door above the stairs creaked. The gold light poured in, blinding, and Tifa and Naked Aeris found themselves back in the foyer surrounded by three doors, the flowers facing away.

"Why did you call me that?" Aeris demanded, dipping her hands in one of the urns of blue liquid and jerking her wrists so that sprays of water sparked in the air.

"I _didn't_," Tifa retorted after regaining her bearings. She crossed her arms in defiance.

Aeris quirked an eyebrow, shook her head, tossing her braid back and forth around her neck. "Then why didn't you correct me?"

"Correct you?"

"When _I_ called you Tifa."

"This is silly," Tifa said, and she started heading toward another door, a different backward facing flower on it, figuring that she would only find herself free after visiting each room. "Let's just go."

As she reached for the door handle, she heard Aeris bound after her and yelp, "But you aren't ready for the primrose!" before she fell over the edge of the open door.

"It's my fault," Tifa heard her own voice whisper in her ear as the air rushed over her cheeks and forced her eyes shut. Her stomach flattened against her spinal cord. "I'm the one who got Aeris involved in this."

The ground smacked hard against her jaw. Her teeth smashed against one another, and Tifa bit through the inside of her cheek. She spat blood onto the floor as she opened her eyes and noticed that the red puddle stood out against the white.

White jabbed into her eyes from every direction, its prolific existence reminding her of the wood grain in Mideel. She blinked and sent her vision roving around the room. Everything she saw had a strange round stretch to it, as if she were looking through a bowed lens. She scooted across the floor, holding her palm out, and sighed when it touched the curved glass. Tifa appeared to be in a cylindrical cage.

The familiar buzz of laboratory computers emanated through the wall, drilling under her fingernails. Strings of black cable ran along the floor, up steps, darting across an observatory dock, a steel rail wrapped around it. Mostly, the laboratory space was open, and Tifa tried to shake the vague sensation of falling over snow-covered slopes. She gripped her shoulders and shuddered before she rolled her eyes.

Tifa Lockhart would _not_ let this get to her. If everything around her stopped making sense, she resolved to remain focused and collected. She could trace a line of reasoning here—maybe one of the cables...

A wheezing croon started up as soon as Tifa latched onto this resolve enough to collect a sense of stability. She knew Hojo's voice. Breath teased through loosely threaded teeth as he hummed. Tifa recognized the song; she had learned to play it in Nibelheim. Had she ever sung it after she met Aeris?

The metal doors hissed open, and Hojo entered, his hair pulled back. He snapped on a pair of rubber gloves as he continued to hum. Tifa heard his tongue plink against his teeth on the shorter notes. He tottered toward her glass cage and flicked the side of a syringe, sending sprays of clear liquid to dissipate into the air.

"You came for me." Tifa heard Aeris' voice. She could still recognize the lightness. It sounded more unfettered than Tifa remembered.

Tifa shook her head, not caring whether Aeris could see her or not, since she did not seem to be in the room with her and Hojo. She could not say from where Aeris' voice had come. "Cloud did," Tifa said.

Hojo, noticing Tifa's movements, leered and ran spindly fingers around the glass. Tifa realized that this should have irked her, but she only felt relieved that the horrors behind the primrose door would at least acknowledge her.

"You said you wanted to," Aeris' voice continued, even as Hojo's fingers found a button. The clutch of the cage released, hissing.

"I didn't," Tifa said, watching Hojo's eyes swivel under his brow, "but I thought, maybe, if I pretended to be concerned for you—like you were for Marlene—Cloud would notice, and—"

As soon as the glass walls had retracted enough, Tifa darted under the space. She slipped across the floor toward Hojo. Her outstretched heel aimed for his shin, and it would have smacked into the flimsy bone if Hojo had not leapt aside just in time.

First onions, then frail old men who nearly fall over when they walk. Today was not Tifa's day.

The scientist tucked his hair behind his ear and laughed before he called for his guards. Infantrymen in blue fatigues sprung from the ground—just as Tifa had nearly forgotten about them. One of them reached for a gun in its holster and pulled the hammer back.

Tifa jumped to a stand and batted the gun to the floor, where it skittered to a halt at Hojo's feet. He waved a syringe full of green fluid in Tifa's direction.

The three infantrymen drew swords and dove for Tifa, but she latched onto the wrist of the closest one and pulled him off-balance and into the man beside him. They both toppled just in time for Tifa to round on the last one and swing-kick him on top of the pile.

This was more like it. Tifa had almost begun to celebrate when the last fallen infantryman's cap fell off to reveal a blond clump—

Tifa whipped her arm around when she felt something sharp sink into her neck, but it only fell back, limply, to her side. She had just enough time to hear the metal of Hojo's laughter and realize that he had used the needle to drug her before she fell forward and lost consciousness.

"You came for me," Aeris' voice insisted. "He couldn't have done it without you; neither could I."

A bare foot prodded under Tifa's chin, forcing her eyes open. She looked from the big toe up the thigh—before turning away and blushing, her face against the gold and red floor. The roots of the onion had felt more like _that_ than titanium.

"_Well_," Aeris huffed, "what do you have to say for yourself?"

She had arrived back in the foyer of flower doors, but her mind lagged behind in the primrose room. Tifa remembered the blond hair spilling out of the infantryman's cap before she lost consciousness. "Was that Cloud?"

Aeris snorted. "You certainly have a one-track mind. I _meant_, are you going to sit and talk to me this time, or are you going to just go charging through another door like a mako-powered train on greased track again?"

Inching away from where she laid, Tifa pushed herself into a sitting position as Aeris plopped down next to her, running her fingers along the sharp edge of the glass Buster sword. They did not bleed.

"Are you going to make sense?" Tifa asked.

Aeris blinked and let her mouth drop, appalled. "I have made nothing _but_ sense my entire life."

Tifa buried one of her knees in her eye-socket, staring at the red zoloms etched into the wall. She remembered finding one of the snakes gutted, dripping black blood from the tall tree next to the marsh. Aeris had suffered a similar fate, but Tifa could not spot a single scar on her body.

"The onion is your only way out of here," Aeris said. "It's forgiveness."

"Forgiveness? What have _I_ done that needs forgiven?"

Aeris narrowed her eyes. "Can you honestly think of nothing?"

Tifa considered that. She had killed ruined lives under AVALANCHE's agenda. She had been something of a tease—she could admit it now—when she was a girl, growing up in Nibleheim. Then, there was what she had said in the primrose room; it had just come out, and Tifa couldn't decide whether it was true or not, but if it were, then it _had_ been pretty terrible…

Without prompting, Aeris started laughing into her hand. The looser-than-expected skin on her thighs wobbled during her hysterics. "I can't believe you fell for that. Onions are forgiveness? What _nonsense_."

"Aeris?"

"Hm?" Innocent.

"Why am I here?"

Rolling her eyes, Aeris crawled over to one of the urns full of blue liquid and dragged it, groaning, to the center of the room. Some of it sloshed onto the floor and immediately evaporated. "Don't get philosophical on me now, Tifa."

"No—I mean, why am I _here_?"

"Because you want to help Cloud." Aeris dipped her hands in the urn and flicked sparks of liquid into the air again. "Here," she said, "wash your hands. You've got some Hojo stink on you."

Tifa wondered how one could tell Hojo stink from the _other_ stink all over her—and more importantly, how washing justher hands could help. She ignored the urn and continued to try to press Aeris for answers. "How is this helping Cloud?"

"Oh, it isn't." Aeris glared at Tifa and nudged the urn.

Rolling her eyes, Tifa dipped her hands into the liquid. It felt thick, like paint rather than the thin water that seemed to vanish when it touched the ground. "Then what—"

Tifa stopped short. She pulled her hands out of the urn and flicked them in the air as Aeris had. The drops fell off like blobs of sludge onto the floor, where they refused to evaporate, but Tifa felt refreshed. She was still aware of the dirt clogging her pours, but it no longer seemed to matter. Some of her agitation had vanished.

"It's helping you," Aeris said. Then she got up, still dragging the Buster Sword replica.

"Eglantine." Aeris gave the backwards-facing flower on the last door an approving nod and opened it.

The only object behind the Eglantine door, aside from the stretching white space, was a wooden—Tifa almost laughed—desk in the center. An empty black coffee mug rested on its side atop the desk, rolling back and forth, with one handle preventing it from falling off the surface. It tipped from side to side, bumping the desk against ceramic, ticking like an unreasonably loud clock.

As Tifa and Aeris—beside Tifa this time, and still naked, but without her ridiculous Buster Sword replica—drew nearer the desk, a man materialized behind it: Don Corneo, his thick hands propped on either side of the ticking mug.

Tick, tick.

Tifa felt as naked as Aeris, wrong, standing before him without the blue silk kimono from her memory, even though the material had weighed considerably less on her thighs than her traveling outfit. That was not the only thing out of place, however. A critical mist sharpened the beads of Don Corneo's eyes where Tifa recalled unveiled giddiness.

Tick, tick.

The Don's eyes swiveled from Aeris to Tifa, Aeris to Tifa, but he did not look them up and down, inspecting their bodies. He remained in his seat and focused on their eyes, as if deciding which pair would best compliment the rhinestones on his cigar jacket.

"Which of you is most worthy of me?"

Tick, tick.

Tifa felt the hairs at the back of her neck prick, remembered a rush of satisfaction the last time she stood before Don Corneo. He had chosen her over Aeris, and maybe he was just a letch, but he was also a man, and his taste counted for something.

Tick, tick.

Except hearing the question phrased _that way_ made her want to crawl into Aeris' skin—in lieu of a proper outfit—instead. His taste did count for something, but she had been stupid to think of that something as _good_.

Tick, tick.

Aeris was naked this round, though, and what Tifa wore did not flatter her nearly as much as the blue dress. Maybe he would—

But when he started laughing, and his outstretched hand knocked the mug off the desk where it dashed onto the ground, she had to look away. She knew he pointed at her. His deep belly laugh and Aeris' serene face confirmed it.

Tifa covered her eyes and turned back around, but before she could pull her hands away, the laughing cut, as if he had wasted through the fat stores that kept him going. Her hands came down. Behind the desk, instead of the Don and his ticking coffee mug, sat Cloud, his Buster Sword—not the glass replica—resting on the mahogany.

Cloud smiled, the way he had before Aeris died, and this time Tifa made herself watch.

Fine, forget appreication. Aeris hadn't sat beside him for the past few days and put up with his wheezing.

"Aeris," Cloud said. He did not say anything else; he did not _need_ to say anything else. Knowing Cloud for as long as she had, Tifa knew that he did not say much, but what he did say, he meant, and what he didn't say—he meant that too.

That's the way it was supposed to be; Tifa wanted Aeris back so that she could make him better, and there he was, smiling like she'd never left.

But she was walking away again.

Tifa turned to see Aeris laugh, covering her mouth the way Tifa had covered her eyes. She winked at Tifa and walked toward the desk.

Before she could stop herself, Tifa stretched out her hand and latched onto Aeris' shoulder. The flesh felt soft, warm, alive, and it seemed to pull words out of her mouth like rocks wrapped in a long string of fish wire. "No, no! Don't go."

Tifa tried to pull Aeirs back to her, to stretch her arms longer and wrap them around Aeris' shoulders to hold more of that warmth, but Aeris' body vanished, and Tifa fell forward on her hands and knees. Her fingers wrapped around something sharp, long, metal.

A look toward the desk told Tifa that Aeris had not vanished at all. Her guide through the land of inverted whorehouses, mirrors, and color-cloaked MPs sat in the chair once occupied by Don Corneo and Cloud Strife. Her heels propped on the wood, legs bent at the knees, thighs dangling unseen behind the desk. Cloud's Buster sword sat in front of them, bleached of color and turned to glass.

"I'd rather have nothing," Aeris said, her voice as airy as ever.

Tifa gripped the thin sword—the Masamune; she had had it all along—in her hand, felt it cut her skin, and started to struggle to her feet.

But Aeris reached down between her legs and pulled on something under the desk. The floor opened beneath Tifa, and she was falling again.

She was starting to think that that was all she ever did: fall for Aeris Gainsborough.


	3. Part Empty Mirror

**Onion: Part Empty Mirror (3/3)**

That morning, the Sun had burned her corneas when she pulled back the curtain. Tifa could see a wisp of pink slipping through the trees in the woods as she peered out the window. Aeris had walked away from Gongaga, away from Cloud.

Away from Tifa.

"She needs time," Tifa whispered to herself. "After what Cloud did."

Tifa closed the curtains and went back to the bedside where Barret sat and shuffled a deck of violet playing cards Yuffie had "bought" at Gold Saucer. Watching him shuffle with one hand was almost mesmerizing, the corners catching on his thick knuckles. Tifa had wondered how Barret had ever gotten used to having only one hand.

Aeris wasn't coming back. Tifa had known it.

Still, she didn't stop her.

* * *

><p>The glass Masamune in Tifa's hands grew heavier, pulling her, as she continued to fall. Eventually, light appeared below her. Flowers grew from the ceiling and the walls, and a blanket of dirt covered the ground. As Tifa continued to fall, she saw the floor dip down into a "V," as if the peaked ceiling were the floor, and the floor were the ceiling. Tifa fell to the ground, expecting a painful impact, possibly death, but the dirt conformed to her hips and back.<p>

Tifa propped herself on her elbows and threw the Masamune in disgust. The air smelled of onions. Her eyes watered from the sting. She could feel the dirt all around her, grains against her skin. She was completely naked.

"Hello, hello!" Aeris.

Tifa craned her neck. Aeris stood on the slope of the upside down ceiling, carrying a basket of flowers, and wearing her pink dress. She looked just as Tifa remembered her. It struck her then, harder than it had before, that Aeris Gainsborough had come back from the grave. The pink and orange of her skin sang. Her chin jutted, pointing. The grass seemed to come from her _eyes_.

"You okay?" Aeris tilted her head, kneeling down to Tifa. "This is a church in the Sector 5 slums... It suddenly fell on top of me. It really gave me a scare."

"Aeris—"

"The roof and the flower bed must have broken your fall." Aeris did not seem to have heard Tifa at all. Or perhaps she had heard someone else. "You're lucky."

The roof and the flower bed? Tifa had fallen through the floor, into the dirt on the ceiling. This wasn't happening to her; it wasn't her memory, like the encounter with Hojo had not been her memory.

"That's all right," Aeris continued. She seemed to glow with pride as she lowered herself into a sitting position in the dirt, still staring at—or through—Tifa. "The flowers here are quite resilient because this is a sacred place. They say you can't grow grass and flowers in Midgar. But for some reason, the flowers have no trouble blooming here. I love it here."

"Aeris," Tifa said again. "Talk to me." She lifted her shaking hand, but feared touching Aeris, lest she vanish.

Aeris vanished anyway, but she soon reappeared on the other slope of the church ceiling, near the wall. "So, we meet again. Don't you remember me?" She leaned forward. "You do?"

This was Cloud's memory, or Aeris' perception of Cloud's memory. He had told Tifa how he had fallen through the ceiling of the church and met Aeris, amazed to just be alive. Was Tifa alive? She had fallen through the floor. It would make a certain amount of sense if she had died, and she would have laughed, had she been one to appreciate irony.

Tifa stood, shaking, and headed toward Aeris. "Oh! I'm so happy! Thanks for buying my flowers. Say, do you have any Materia?" Tifa grabbed Aeris by the shoulders, surprised to find that her hands did not pass through the memory—was she a ghost? What a foolish thing to ask _now_—but Aeris did not seem to react. Tifa shook her.

"Please," Tifa said, "you said you were going to help me."

Aeris reached one hand into her braid and pulled out the white materia, the same materia that had bounced down the stairs of the Forgotten City and sunk into the lake before the corpse. She held it in one hand, and it glistened with the light coming from the church windows. "But mine is special. It's good for absolutely nothing."

Tifa wanted to destroy it.

Spurred by this desire, Tifa's hand darted out to grab the materia. It felt cold in her hand, but also softer than materia should, and she realized it had a familiar texture. Tifa looked into her palm. The white materia had turned into an onion.

In that instant, the pressure of Aeris' shoulder under Tifa's other hand disappeared, turned to still, cool air. She looked up to see that Aeris had gone. Tifa clutched the onion fiercely and closed her eyes to keep its scent out.

"That wasn't very nice." At this point, Tifa thought she would recognize Aeris' voice through ten thousand leagues of ocean water. "You should ask for things. I was going to give it to you anyway."

Tifa turned around. Aeris still wore her pink dress, and Tifa still wore nothing, but she seemed to stare at Tifa intently, no longer playing out Cloud's memory. Tifa felt unbelievably vulnerable, and Aeris somehow more approachable, therefore more intimidating. Her fat tongue shifted from side to side in her mouth to no avail.

"I suppose it's time for you to go then." Aeris shook her head. "It can't he helped."

When she turned around and started heading toward the front of the church, the oval window shedding light over the dirt and turning it golden, Tifa could not help herself. She ran after Aeris, throwing her arms around the flower girl's neck, pressing her bare skin against the back of her dress, and holding her tightly. The onion fell from Tifa's hand, a soft clunk signaling its arrival on the dirt floor.

As warm as she looked. All Tifa could think in that moment was that Aeris was as warm as she looked.

"Will you come with me?" Tifa asked.

"There's only one onion." Aeris sounded wistful as she leaned into Tifa's chest, but not sad. The fabric of her dress irritated Tifa's skin. "I suppose I will have to continue to do the same things over and over again here instead of there."

Tifa let go of Aeris, but left her hands hovering in the air in case she would try to leave her sight again. Aeris made no such attempt. Instead, she turned around to face Tifa. She stood close enough for Tifa to recognize the flowers in her basket: the tulip, the primrose, and the eglantine from Corneo's inverted mansion. The flowers were barely recognizable from the front.

"I'm not going, then," Tifa said. "Go instead of me."

"That's silly." Aeris ran the fingers of her free hand over the handle of her basket, and Tifa shivered. "Why would I do that?"

"Cloud needs you," Tifa said.

Aeris snickered. When Tifa's expression did not change, she raised an eyebrow. "You're serious, aren't you? Now, _really_. Whatever would he do with a flighty, absent-minded girl like me? It was always the other way around; I used him, you see. I wanted to see the sky, to escape Shinra, to save the world…"

Tifa had thought that about Aeris, once. Right after she'd seen her die, when her body was propped in an unnatural sitting position against the rail of the platform where the Masamune had ended her life. Tifa had run her hand through Aeris' hair and resisted the urge to try to shake her awake. It was the way Tifa had stopped herself from crying and run from Cloud and that platform with her dignity and her conscience intact.

She didn't say anything to Aeris. Instead, she looked away, down her front, over her breasts, to stare at her toes burrowing into the earth.

"Do you know what I think?" Aeris asked. Tifa's head snapped to attention. "I think you feel like you need me. You're afraid you aren't even a person, just what Cloud sees in you, and you're afraid he's gone forever. You'll vanish without either of us around to make you."

"I killed you," Tifa said, trying to bury Aeris' words with her toes. Her chest heaved, but she refused to look away.

Aeris considered this over a period which seemed to rival the time Tifa had spent sitting next to vegetable Cloud in Mideel. She licked her lips and placed the basket of flowers on the ground next to the onion. "It's possible," she said. "I doubt it, though."

Tifa remembered the mirror in the first hallway she had fallen into, the sensation of the glass Masamune in her hand in Corneo's office, Aeris' back as she walked through the forests of Gongaga…

"I killed you, and Cloud can't be saved without you."

Aeris rolled her eyes and leaned against the church wall at the top of the slope. She crossed her arms. "That isn't all." She shook her head. "You have to dig deeper."

What did Aeris want her to say? The three doors. Cloud had vanished from the memory of their meeting, leaving only the two of them. She had been Aeris, sitting in her cage in the Shinra building, and trying to fight away from Hojo, all the while insisting that she, as Tifa, had not particularly wanted to save her. She had been standing in an office while Don Corneo, then Cloud, then Aeris all passed judgment, and only Corneo wanted her. Bewildered, Tifa sat down in the dirt, feeling it grip her buttocks. She pounded her fists against her forehead.

"_You_ _want_ _me-_to save Cloud," Aeris said, exasperated.

The mirror in Mideel. Braiding her hair. She had done it as if she braided her hair every day, and when she went to wash it down the drain, it had been so much lighter—

But then Tifa had flushed the hair down the drain, and it was gone.

Tifa stood again. She walked toward Aeris, slowly, deliberately, drowning her thoughts in her strides, put her hand at the base of Gainsborough's head, and leaned down to kiss her.

To Tifa's surprise, Aeris kissed back. She seemed reluctant at first, but then her lips parted, moving in slow circles around Tifa's. Tifa felt her hair stand on end, the vulnerability of being naked and being so bold supporting them like flag stands. She moved from Aeris' lips, down the side of her cheek, to her neck, shaking as she went. Aeris made no attempts to stop her or assist her. Tifa's insides had gone numb, and she wanted to start a fire somewhere.

As if reading her mind, Aeris' orange-pink skin burned, breathing, her pulse shuddering through her neck. Tifa moved her hands to Aeris' dress and began to undo the top button. In what seemed like an instant, the familiar dress had fallen to the dirt with the flowers and the onion. How had Tifa's fingers moved so quickly?

Aeris had begun to lean into her lips, to show some signs of enthusiasm. Tifa swallowed. Was she still shaking? _Someone's_ skin seemed to vibrate.

There was laughter. Deep within a throat, high and lilting. "Are you going to belabor this, or are you going to do it?"

That mocking, more than anything, made Tifa shudder. She couldn't breathe through her nose anymore. Her wrists had begun to shake. The tightness in her stomach created a nearly solid sensation of pleasant pain.

Tifa forced her fingers down Aeris' back, burrowing the tips into Aeris' spinal column and hoping it hurt. Her breath rushed from her body…

Or was it Aeris'?

Lips came together again, rough, tearing. Aeris' teeth scraped across Tifa's lower lip. The biting of Tifa's fingers into Aeris' back intensified. A sharp intake of breath.

Tifa dragged her mouth down Aeris' neck, between Aeris' hard nipples, pausing over the elastic abdomen. She could feel the muscles tighten beneath her lips. Tifa gripped Aeris' loose thighs like pegs and dove between them. Aeris stayed standing, swaying.

Aeris shuddered. They both shuddered. Tifa's hold jerked loose, slid to the back of Aeris' knees. Knees buckled, jutting forward around Tifa's ears. Aeris wobbled, and Tifa expected her to laugh. She didn't. Heat seared under Tifa's sideburns as she drove her tongue deeper, tilting her head to slide it lengthwise along Aeris' cunt.

Aeris' thighs squeezed Tifa's head in a vice as she rocked back, thudding on the dirt slope of the church ceiling. A crack jerked in Tifa's neck. Tifa pressed her own thighs together as she craned her face, eyes darted to spot Aeris' knees pointing toward the church floor.

Breath came so loudly Tifa barely noticed the clog of air struggling to bypass her tongue and the flesh and fluid in her mouth. Tifa ran her own hand across her own hip, down between her legs. As she moaned, Aeris knotted her fingers in Tifa's brown-almost black-hair and yanked hard, until Tifa lurched toward her stomach. Aeris grabbed Tifa's shoulders more insistently, and Tifa stopped touching herself, following the hands until their bodies flushed, breasts together, abdomens taught and hipbones clipping.

Tifa's eyelashes tangled with Aeris'. When Tifa looked past the lambent flares of Aeris' iris, she saw the maw of the The Forgotten City's lake. Her stomach let go of whatever solid ache it was gnawing on, even as Tifa's fingers frantically sought the curve of Aeris' hip and squeezed.

Aeris' fingers, struggling up from below, seared Tifa's thighs, drew pinpricks in sensitive flesh, jerking in and out of her, leaving fluid trails on Tifa's legs and sending her whole body bucking. They rocked together, devouring and rupturing into cysts. Aeris ground her jaw into Tifa's collarbone as Tifa's fingers fumbled around her hip and slid between her thighs.

When Aeris came, she simply stilled, stopped fluttering and moaning into Tifa's body. Then she flipped Tifa over so that the grains of the dirt ate at her back and drove two fingers between her thighs. Even as Tifa's abdomen clenched, even as she struggled to breathe, she focused on the black disks in Aeris' eyes, and when she felt herself drawn out by Aeris' hands, she thought she had had her shriveled insides ripped out.

Tifa hadn't found herself there, only her own breathing, and the cold air of the upside down church sending furrows of dirt across her sticky stomach. Tifa ran her hand from her own collarbone to her stomach: the braided flesh where Masamune had bit her in Nibelheim. It hadn't gone all the way through, just a slash along her gut.

Aeris, still breathing hard, flopped down beside her.

She didn't have a scar.

"Aeris?" Tifa asked. "I can't take you with me anymore, can I?"

"Don't get me wrong." Aeris bit her lip, and Tifa thought perhaps it would be different if she kissed her again-but only for a second. "I've enjoyed being the star of your anxiety show."

As soon as Tifa stood, she felt the weight of her traveling wear on her shoulders and thighs. She was still sweaty, still covered in Aeris and her scent. She still had the taste of her in her mouth.

Aeris stood as well, but she picked up the onion on the way up. Still naked, she offered it to Tifa.

For a moment, Tifa hesitated to take it. She saw Aeris' hair, still struggling to maintain the braid, fists of it bubbling in half disks, dirt peppering the strands.

"It's only guilt," Aeris said. Then she giggled. "It's never killed anyone. You'll see. So will Cloud."

Tifa thought of Cloud, back in Mideel hissing, unable to hold up his own head. "He is Cloud, isn't he?" Tifa asked. "I haven't made the wrong decision."

Aeris shrugged comically, lifting her arms along with her shoulders, turning up her palms. "You're the only person who would know."

Aeris may have been dead, but she was absolutely fucking right.

"I don't need you," Tifa said, but when she said it, it should have been empowering, it should have been life-affirming, but instead it just felt like Aeris had taken the Buster Sword replica to the scar along her torso.

Aeris drew her hand to Tifa's face. "It isn't the worst thing in the world."

Tifa took the onion. Then she turned and took a step toward the window of the church. Feeling a Naked Aeris at her back, Tifa peeked over her shoulder and saw another version of herself, joined by the foot she had yet to move. A glass sword hilt missing a blade sweltered in this Tifa's palm instead of an onion. Her hair was in Tifa's customary loose ponytail, but separated into three strips at the end. That Tifa had the same paper disk pupils Aeris had.

Aeris, beside Tifa's shadow, beamed. "I can take care of myself," she said.

Still gripping the onion, Tifa started for the window and didn't look back.

* * *

><p>Through the window, Tifa found herself squeezing her hips along wide steel tubes, dirt resting in the troughs of her eyes, and water dripping on her stomach and smearing along the metal. The cleanliness of Aeris' blue liquid rubbed away, and the sting of filth returned.<p>

She was _stuck with it_.

Tifa reached a hand high and felt air rush around her wrist. The onion vanished from her palm. She had almost freed herself form the tunnel! She wriggled harder and felt the tube force her out like a bite-and-spit. She was flung onto a wooden floor, and when she picked herself up, she discovered that she had emerged in the bathroom of Mideel's hospital.

When she looked in the mirror, she was herself. That meant everything that went with it and nothing else.

Tifa walked back down the hall, resumed her place in her wooden chair, and wiped the drool from Cloud's chin. She'd forgive him. After all, they were her memories too.

"I'll help you find who you are," Tifa promised. "If Aeris can be dead do it, it can't be that hard for the living."

_Thanks for reading. Thanks again to Clan Dragoodle for help with Part 1 and general Tifa/Aeris inspiration. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that I received some inspiration from xoVanilla-Bean's "Wonderland." I apologize for formatting on scene breaks. FFnet is glitchy. Don't forget to review. _


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